The Shaking

Chapter Forty Three

Two weeks later; Dungeness Outer Exclusion Area. 06.58.

"WE'RE ABOUT TO LAND!" the loadmaster shouted to Michael Wilson. It was difficult to make out what the soldier was saying above the throbbing row inside the Chinook helicopter's hold, the man's voice being further muffled by the full Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear protection suits, along with respirators that both he and Michael were wearing.

"OK" Wilson mumbled in reply. Both his military escorts made ready to get up, unclipping their safety belts; they montioned him to remain strapped in and seated. Michael couldn't see the ground rising through the small porthole windows in the side of the large aircraft and didn't know the machine had touched down until he felt the jolt of landing. Then things happened quickly; the rear cargo ramp door was lowered, and having had his harness released by his minders they urged him to squeeze through the thin space between the foldable seats mounted on the cabin wall and the cargo of supplies lashed securely down in the centre of the deck. Once he'd done so the pair almost picked him up and carried him along with them, his bodyguards pushed Wilson's head down as they ran underneath the rotors viciously slashing at the air above them. No sooner were they clear than the rear door began to rise and the chopper dusted off with a renewed shrill of turbines amid a hurricane of its own making. Climbing at full power it shrank in size as the whopping of the contra-rotating blades faded away.

As the silence began to return to the landing zone - a grassy field adjacent to a minor road - both of Wilson's companions looked cautiously around them. One - Corporal Stevens, the navigator - holding a map and GPS unit in sealed clear plastic cases was responsible for ensuring his arrival at the objective's location. The other, Private Turvey, the monitor, swept a radiation detector in front of him. Both men shouldered compact automatic weapons: During his briefing Michael had been told the troops were authorised to use deadly force in order to protect him from harm.

"Are you all right Sir?" the corporal asked, his words distorted through the pig snout of the gas mask. Wilson, just beginning to recover from his flight and the rushed disembarkation, gave a thumbs up sign. "OK, let's go then, it's just over there!" Stevens pointed further away toward a small boxy concrete structure with a large angled solar panel mounted on its roof. The building was about half the height of a telephone kiosk, surrounded by a high aluminium palisade fence which split into nasty looking toothed spikes at the top of each of its thick slats. If that didn't deter any casual vandalism of the Deep Scan measuring station, nothing would.

Wilson and Stevens followed Turvey who scanned the road ahead with the olive drab coloured geiger counter. Even though his ears were still ringing from the noise of the Chinook's engines and despite outside sounds being deadened by the thick material of his protective suit, Michael could hear the unit emitting a background drizzle of clicks. With a start he realised the trio were being irradiated at this very moment by fallout particles settled on the tarmac and within the bordering roadside hedges. He also noted the utter absence of any birdsong.

A few steps further on the drizzle became a squall of noise; the individual counts merging into an indistinguishable roar. A redundant alarm beeped urgently. Turvey quickly stepped back and gestured the other two over to the left hand side of the deserted carriageway, away from the hotspot. The agitated detector calmed as he did so. Even so, as Wilson followed exactly in the footsteps of his guide as he'd been instructed to during his brief introduction to CBRN procedures, he felt his body temperature rising, along with a light-headedness and a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, almost like the sudden onset of a virus, even though he'd been told the radiation exposure couldn't affect him so quickly. The scientist prayed he was merely experiencing a psychosomatic response.

"We should get this done and get out of here as quickly as possible." said the corporal; Michael nodded his agreement. The men increased their walking pace, even though they risked overheating in their suits and misting their mask lenses by doing so.